Turning the Page: US Strategic Focus in Afghanistan

As the US shifts focus to negotiations and troop withdrawal, a panel of experts discusses how to construct a satisfactory exit strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

ASP Fellow Joshua Foust recently participated in a fantastic panel at the CATO Institute on “Turning the Page in Afghanistan.” The panel sought to address whether and how the United States can scale back its objectives in the 10-year war. The other panelists were Joshua Rovner of the US Naval War College, Malou Innocent of CATO, and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.

Joshua Rovner began by arguing that our mission in Afghanistan is based on the false assumption that failure there will lead to a safe haven for al Qaeda (AQ) and/or nuclear terrorism. Rovner said that the well-resourced AQ of the 1990s that operated from safe havens–which are easier to target than today’s dispersed AQ networks–is gone. As for loose nukes, Rovner said there is no empirical evidence to support the “old-fashioned domino theory” that Taliban gains in Afghanistan will lead to Taliban gains in Pakistan (and use of their nuclear complex). He concluded that the US should leverage its comparative advantage in counterterrorism (CT) and shift focus from statebuilding to a small presence of CT operatives.

The panel turned to Malou Innocent, who introduced elements of regional diplomacy. Acknowledging that diplomacy will be “time-intensive and painstaking,” she discussed how Afghanistan serves as a lynchpin of regional trade and security for a number of actors (India, Pakistan, the SCO, etc). She concluded that reaching a consensus power-sharing agreement for the region will likely involve intense US commitment and negotiations with states we consider enemies.

ASP’s Joshua Foust then took the podium to discuss “why negotiations with the Taliban will help unravel everything we’ve achieved in Afghanistan.” He argued that the insurgency is fractured and their means brutal; negotiating with them will neither address the fundamental political issues driving the conflict nor serve as a clear strategy to govern the war. Foust said that President Obama’s stated objectives—to defeat AQ by developing a stable and secured Afghan government—are incomplete:

“That’s not a strategy… That is a preferred end state. And that is something that I think we can pretty universally agree is a good idea. But it’s not actually a framework for what you’re trying to accomplish at the end of the day, and it says nothing about the means that you’re going to use to accomplish that framework.”

Foust also pointed out that our strategy cannot depend on asking the Taliban to buy into the very flawed government that is driving people to join the insurgency. He concluded that because negotiations won’t service any broad strategy but withdrawal, we shouldn’t express optimism that they’ll serve as a watershed moment for the war.

Michael O’Hanlon pointed out that although safe havens may not matter as much as they once did, they are still problematic, as evidenced by our current concern with the anarchy in Yemen. He also suggested that while AQ is decimated in its leadership, its members now operate as a diaspora of autonomous groups that are harder to track. He added that Rovner’s suggested strategy of scaling back to a smaller CT force wrongly assumes that we would still hold bases in Bagram and Kandahar, which may be lost to the Taliban if we withdraw quickly. He concluded that instead of focusing on negotiations, we should encourage the development of legitimate political parties and a competitive political arena in Afghanistan.

A lengthy and interesting Q&A session followed. For video or podcast of the entire event, see http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=8133.

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